Background
Prior critical work
Part of the reason for the importance of this particular piece in Eliot's body of work is the position it holds as successor to an earlier (and probably better known) effort at defining the critical endeavour, Tradition and the Individual Talent. In that earlier piece (first published in 1919), Eliot made famous use of aEliot and New Criticism
Eliot is often claimed by the New Critics as one of their founding fathers, an "honor" he rejected for much the same reasons that he avoided explicit theorising on the subject of literature: namely, because of his conception of the only true criticism as that of a poet trying to better his art. In some of his work, Eliot had espoused the idea of criticism as necessarily impersonal. The evaluation of Eliot's criticism occurred relatively early; for example, an appraisal of his work focusing exclusively on Eliot the critic (as opposed to Eliot the poet) appeared in 1941 in a book byOne of the best things in his influence has been his habit of consideringThis is quite similar to the New Critical attitudes of such authors as W. K. Wimsatt andaesthetic Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...effect as independent of religious effect, or moral, or political and social; as an end that is beyond and not co-ordinate with these.John Crowe Ransom, ''The New Criticism'' (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1941), 138.
Content of the lecture
Eliot's paper is a concise statement of his reactions to the new directions that literary criticism had taken in the years since the publication in 1923 of his article "The Function of Criticism." In this way, the paper is also a more mature re-evaluation of his own positions. Much of its length is involved in this kind of self-study, both of his earlier critical work as well as of his poetry.Influences on later critics
Throughout, the essay demonstrates the influences Eliot had on the New Critics. While Eliot states early on that he failed to see why he was deemed by current literary scholarship to have given birth to New Criticism (106), he also uses the essay as a platform from which to proclaim a number of principles that are quite similar to those of the New Critics: * the idea of the circumstances surrounding a work's creation as irrelevant (112) * the "danger . . . of assuming that there must be just one interpretation of the poem as a whole, ndthat it must be right" (113) * the lack of a need to assess the author's intent (113–14) * the unimportance of the "feelings" of the reader (114) * the limitation of ''literary'' criticism to the study of the literary object, i.e., the work itself (116) However, at the same time, Eliot takes the opportunity to disavow that school of criticism. He ridicules one of the methods of New Criticism, known today asThe method is to take a well-known poem . . . without reference to the author or to his other work, analyse it stanza by stanza and line by line, and extract, squeeze, tease, press every drop of meaning out of it that one can. It might be called the lemon-squeezer school of criticism. . . . I imagine that some of the poets (they are all dead except myself) would be surprised at learning what their poems mean . . . (113)Eliot is here giving voice to one of the most common objections to New Criticism, namely that it removes all the enjoyment from a work of literature by dissecting it. This essay strongly asserts that enjoyment is an important component of the reading of literature. Eliot makes no distinction between "''enjoyment'' and ''understanding''," seeing the two not "as distinct activities—one emotional and the other intellectual. . . . To understand a poem comes to the same thing as to enjoy it for the right reasons" (115). On the whole question of ''enjoyment'', Eliot diverges from the general trend of New Criticism, which primarily concerned itself with interpretation. Eliot further distances himself from the New Critics with his implication of the possibility of ''misunderstanding'' a poem (115), an idea that the New Critics would consider heretical.The precise line from Eliot's paper is "to enjoy a poem under a misunderstanding is to enjoy what is merely a projection of our own mind." The "official" New Critical line on this subject would follow
Difference between understanding and explanation
A large part of this lecture is devoted to Eliot's critique of what he calls "the criticism of explanation by origins" (107). One of these is ''The Road to Xanadu'', byDefinition of literary criticism
Eliot, like the New Critics, distinguishes among types or classes of criticism, isolating (as the lecture's title suggests) a certain area for ''literary'' criticism. Also like the New Critics, he allows that there is merit to such studies. He credits Coleridge with bringing other disciplines (e.g., philosophy, psychology) into the field of literary study. Eliot defines specifically literary criticism as criticism written in orderto help his .e., the critic'sreaders to ''understand and enjoy'' work of literature ... We can therefore ask, about any writing which is offered to us as literary criticism, is it aimed towards understanding and enjoyment? If it is not, it may still be a legitimate and useful activity; but it is to be judged as a contribution to psychology, or sociology, or logic, or pedagogy, or some other pursuit—and it is to be judged by specialists, not by men of letters. (116–17)The argument of the essay is for a strongly individualist criticism, made clear by the frequent references to the author's own works. "The best of my ''literary'' criticism . . . consists of essays on poets and poetic dramatists who had influenced me" (106). In this, Eliot has something in common with the style of literary criticism expounded by Matthew Arnold, known for its emphasis on reading to make oneself a better writer.
References
* T. S. Eliot, "The Frontiers of Criticism," ''On Poetry and Poets'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 103–18.Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frontiers Of Criticism, The Essays in literary criticism Essays by T. S. Eliot 1956 essays